Youth volunteering for development is a strategy for engaging young men and women in a range of activities that can improve youth participation and positively harness the energy, vigour and innovation of youth people to contribute to the achievement of national and global development goals.

The situation of young volunteers in African countries
In many of the African countries youth under the age of 24 constitute over a third of the total population. While young people are a recognised sector of society, they are too often viewed as recipients of government aid rather than as potential contributors to and active catalysts for the development of their countries. Nevertheless the World Bank’s recently published 2007 World Development Report comments that seven of the eight Millennium Development Goals have outcomes that relate to young people and that even where young people are not the focus of the goals, their involvement can be important to their achievement.

African countries tend to define youth in a very broad age category (in some cases as young as 10, in some as old as 35), which has major implications for policy formulation, resource allocation and the development of youth programmes. Challenges faced by African youth include unemployment and underemployment, HIV/AIDS, a lack of education and skills, exclusion, limited infrastructure to meet youth interests, and civil war, regional conflict and unstable political environments. Add to that the struggle for identity, a sense of powerlessness and the impact of poverty, and the importance of addressing the needs of young people becomes obvious if African societies are to face a positive future. This requires that young people be viewed and supported as assets in the development of their countries – valuable, untapped resources – rather than as a problematic and marginalised majority.

Youth policy
While more than two-thirds of the African countries surveyed by UNV in 2006 have youth policies in place, only one third of responding countries drew young people into the process of youth policy formulation. A number of the countries are in the process of reviewing their youth policies while others are formulating youth policies for the first time. Some 40% of the surveyed 36 African countries have a national youth service in place. While this is positive, it is important to recognise that in many cases the ministries of youth are not, for the most part, the major drivers of national development. Furthermore volunteer and youth service programmes on their own do not necessarily contribute effectively to sustainable development. Good governance and a drive for democracy are critical success factors for youth participation; and even where these are present, the impact of youth volunteering and youth service programmes depend squarely on inter-governmental cooperation, public/private partnerships, volunteer programme design and structure, the procedures whereby young people are assigned to projects, and the capacity with which programmes are managed.

Youth structures
A significant number of countries mentioned cite the lack of resources, both human and financial, as some of the operational challenges facing youth structures. Other difficulties faced by youth structures include a lack of national and legal recognition, insufficient coordination among youth centres, a lack of infrastructure for youth activities, a lack of channels of communication, a lack of IT equipment and a lack of independence in terms of decision-making.

The paper identifies three supra-national youth initiatives in Africa viz. the African Youth Parliament (AYP), the Conference of the Youth and Sports Ministers of French-speaking Countries (CONFEJES) and a new initiative called the ECOWAS Youth Ambassadors for          programme. Together, these initiatives, along with others such as the Youth Employment Summit, could support African countries in their efforts to introduce strategies that strengthen youth volunteering for development. The UNV country survey results also show that a range of United Nations agencies are playing a significant role in terms of working with youth in Africa, as are some 30 other organisations (listed in Appendix 1).

Examples of youth volunteering for development
Nine country case descriptions were analysed and reveal two broad categories of youth volunteering for development: (a) initiatives that aim to create an enabling environment for youth volunteering; and (b) initiatives aimed at addressing development issues through structured volunteer programmes.

Examples of the different ways in which African countries are approaching youth policy development include Niger where government and civil society organisations are working with international partners through a two-phase process to establish the legislative context and operational mechanisms to strengthen youth volunteering; Kenya in which a major youth policy initiative is in process within which youth volunteering is to be fostered; and Burkina Faso which is putting in place national infrastructure for the launch of a national corps of “Volunteers for Development”.  In addition to using public policy to shape the volunteering context, there are examples of programmes that can contribute to the growth of an enabling environment for youth volunteering for development, as is the case in Mali and Cape Verde.

The sectors in which young people are volunteering for development range from eco-volunteering (Mali) through HIV/AIDS (Benin and South Africa) and food security (Sierra Leone) to district-level capacity building for local government (Mozambique). 

Trends
An important trend in these case descriptions is that in a number of instances youth have been the main drivers, or play a very important role in the success of the volunteering initiatives undertaken. In the process, the programmes are developing the young people themselves, equipping them with skills that are broadly applicable and encouraging the young participants to consider opportunities for further learning and new career directions. 

The other key benefit is that the young volunteers see themselves as active development agents within their communities; in the process they have gained the admiration of their communities, and have acquired practical experience. In addition, young people are helping to broaden public awareness of volunteering, and helping to shape the direction of volunteer policies and interventions. The case descriptions also demonstrate how volunteer programmes can be linked to policy frameworks and how this contributes to their sustainability and success.

Operational challenges can be overcome by well-planned pilot processes, public-private partnerships and an enabling youth volunteering policy framework.  Most of the examples also demonstrate the benefit of having various players working together to advance youth volunteering for development. This does not only apply to international donors working with youth, but also involves inter-departmental cooperation within government, and partnerships between government, youth formations, civil society organisations and the private sector.

The examples cited in the paper yield a number of experiential lessons that can be used to shape youth volunteering initiatives. While many of these initiatives are relatively recent and their impact and sustainability is still to be tested, they show that through volunteering, the energy of youth can be harnessed in service of national development.

Recommendations
The paper concludes with recommendations for a sustainable, productive youth volunteering movement. They are directed at a range of different stakeholders who need to be involved in making youth-volunteering-for-development initiatives a cornerstone of youth advancement in African countries: the African Union, governments, regional bodies, civil society organisations and institutions, and the private sector.